Link Building Strategies

Here is a recap of what happened in the search forums today...View the full article

In my Friday video, I mentioned some more volatility heating up on Friday morning and I promised to cover it if I see more signs of that update. Well, many of the other tools noticed volatility around April 25th, this past Friday, in addition to the 22nd and 23rd volatility we covered earlier last week.View the full article

Google AdSense has been testing serving and displaying ads within AI Chatbots. Bloomberg reported Google has already begun testing this within AI search apps iAsk and Liner and plans to allow other AI Chatbot providers to include AdSense ads in their chat responses.View the full article

It's been about a week and what would be do without reporting on yet more Google Search ranking volatility... I am seeing signs of a Google Search ranking update and volatility over the past 24 hours, maybe kicking in April 15th through April 16th, today.View the full article

Google's John Mueller said if you have hreflang tags that point to a 301 redirect, it is probably okay. But you probably also want to automate the process of setting up those hreflang tags so that there is no redirect.View the full article

Here is a recap of what happened in the search forums today, through the eyes of the Search Engine Roundtable and other search forums on the web. Google's CEO, Sundar Pichai...View the full article

Google is sending some of its advertisers personalized emails about how they can boost their ads performance by following a few steps. The email is titled, "Your step-by-step guide to boost ads performance."View the full article

Back in February, I reported about this unusual Google Search ad format for people also considered sponsored results. They did not look like ads, but they were labeled sponsored. Ginny Marvin, Google's Ads Liaison, confirmed these are a sponsored ads experiment, but clicking on them do not result in a charge. They are labeled as sponsored only because they go to more commercial queries.View the full article

Jerry Dischler, the almost 20 year Google executive, is reportedly leaving Google a year and a half after he stepped down from that position. Jerry Dischler was involved in a lot of the Department of Justice negativity around Google's ad business, which may or may not be related to him stepping down in 2023 and now reportedly leaving Google in 2025.View the full article

Since the weekend, Google has started to roll out Google Discover on desktop in many countries and regions. I personally can trigger it in Google New Zealand and some other locations but I am not yet able to trigger it on Google.com in the United States.View the full article

Google Posts/Updates are starting to disappear from the local panels within Google Search. I saw complaints about this yesterday and tested it by adding a post myself on my business, it was there, until it wasn't. Now I see a huge number of complaints that posts or updates are missing from Google local panels.View the full article

Google's John Mueller explained that changing the dates in your XML Sitemaps lastmod date to all show today, the most recent day, won't favor your rankings or SEO. He said on Reddit, "setting today's date in a sitemap file isn't going to be something that works in favor of anyone, it's just lazy."View the full article

Google launched its shopping / e-commerce card in the search results as a test several months ago. Since then, the card has undergone various tweaks. Now, Google is testing showing an animated/playable video in the shopping card block.View the full article

Google has added a new display ads option for ad intents. The new option lets you pick between always show display ads with organic search results or show search ads with organic search results, and display ads if search ads are unavailable.View the full article

Microsoft is testing shading the site names, the brand names, of retailers in the Bing Shopping search results. So the name Amazon is in a blue shaded background color as opposed to just saying Amazon.com.View the full article

We've seen variations of Google's popular products section in the search results show both article and video content reviews. But now we are seeing another format for it, one that even links to laptop reviews from 55 years ago, a good ten years before the Osborne 1 hit shelves.View the full article

Apple announced this week that it partnered with MICHELIN Guide; The Infatuation and Golf Digest to provide "insights, ratings, and reviews from expert sources" within Apple Maps. View the full article

Google is once again testing a light blue color, cyan, for its title links in the search results. Google tested this on and off quite a lot over the years, but Google is testing it again.View the full article

Here is a recap of what happened in the search forums today...View the full article

This week, guess what, we saw more Google search ranking volatility heat up mid-week. Several new studies have come out showing that AI Overviews hurt click-through rates from search results. Google will stop supporting the...View the full article

Here is a recap of what happened in the search forums today...View the full article

Google added a number of new features to the event rich results search feature within Google Search. Some of these might not be new, but now on these event results you can share the event, add it to your calendar, see similar events, get more details on the venue and find nearby food and drinks.View the full article

Google is testing new buttons and tags on its local listings and local ads. These include a new "read reviews" button, various appointment tags and other business descriptive tags.View the full article

Google Ads is updating its Ads Transparency policy to specify that it will display the payment profile name as the payer name for verified advertisers, if that name differs from their verified advertiser name, starting this month.View the full article

Google is testing a "recently viewed" label in the search results, next to search result snippets that you have clicked on in your recent search history. This is similar to the you visit often label and the other recently visited examples we've seen over the years.View the full article